


come on, baby, light my fire

by UbiquitousMixie



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 19:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11905017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UbiquitousMixie/pseuds/UbiquitousMixie
Summary: "Have you ever shot gunned, Grace Hanson?"





	come on, baby, light my fire

**Author's Note:**

> This is written for the prompt J is for Jacket. I had a lot of fun writing this, and I hope you enjoy! Comments make me super happy, so let me know what you think!

As the morning breeze wafts into the beach house, Grace allows herself a brief moment to close her eyes and embrace the new day. She breathes in the faint scent of salt and brewing coffee and the faint, musky scent of pot in the box on the shelf beside hera, the combination prodding at a memory in the corner of her mind. 

Looking around, she makes a mental effort to forego irritation while she tidies up her workspace. It has been over forty years since she's met Frankie, three years since she and Frankie had become roommates, and only three months since they became something more. It won't do to get irritated now after everything that has passed. 

Grace grabs the remote control, left behind on the table in their dining area, and returns it to its home as she considers the work to be done that day. She then scoops up the olive green jacket left draped over the chair, the rusted pins on the lapel clanking together as Grace gathers it into her arms. The memory unfurls, prodding her to lose herself for a moment, and Grace gives in. The work can wait a little longer. 

-

As parties went, this one was a bust. Grace could have done it better; for one thing, she would not have made it possible for a guest to prod through her cabinets in search of booze to spike their own coffees -- she would have made them herself.

Alas, this was not Grace's party, and she was, in fact, searching for booze to pour into the coffee she made herself while her hosts were absorbed in their respective hosting duties. When she found a decent bottle of Scotch hidden behind a container of pasta, Grace smirked with smug satisfaction at knowing the exact formula of the conservative WASP. She wondered if the secret stash belonged to Gerry Whitney or his wife, Barb. It didn't much matter; she poured a healthy dose into her coffee regardless and replaced the Scotch before anyone had an inkling of what she'd done. 

Taking a sip of her strong concoction, Grace considered her options. Returning to the living room would mean a return to a conversation about curtains. She couldn't bear the thought of listening to Barb monopolize the conversation, bragging with lipstick on her teeth about the hideous linens they'd had flown in from Italy. Instead, Grace snuck through the back patio doors opening into the Whitney garden. Robert was nowhere to be found, no doubt talking politics or business or whatever boring drivel with Gerry and Sol in a study that looked like it was straight out of National Geographic, complete with animal busts from countries to which neither Whitney had ever been. She would have preferred to go home but knew that Robert and Sol had been patiently working at cultivating this relationship with Gerry, and so she was required stay and fulfill her duty as Robert's wife. She'd likely get a diamond bracelet out of it, so Grace decided keep her complaints to herself -- for now.

It was a beautiful night, at least. Crickets chirped loudly, beckoning to her to relax. Grace strolled with her strongly spiked coffee, pausing to smell a pink rose protruding from a bush as if awaiting her specifically. She inhaled deeply, enjoying its fragrance, and then she smelled it.

Marijuana. 

Rolling her eyes, Grace made her way to the small cement bench at the back of the garden, nestled between two voluminous bushes. Sitting between them was Frankie Bergstein and the fattest joint she'd ever seen. 

"Who goes there? Friend or foe?" Frankie asked, squinting in the dark toward Grace's presence. 

"Your mileage may vary," Grace responded tersely. "Are you seriously getting stoned in Barb Whitney's prize-winning garden?"

"Damn straight I am. Have you _met_ her? It's impossible to make it through one of these goddess-forsaken dinner parties sober."

"Speak for yourself. I've managed just fine."

Frankie chuckled, scooting over on the bench. "Oh sure -- that wine at dinner doesn't count, and neither does whatever you've got in that cup."

Grace's cheeks flamed with color, and she was grateful that the moonlight filtered through a canopy of leaves was not enough to betray her embarrassment at being pegged so effortlessly by a woman so thoroughly different from her. She'd known Frankie for only three or four years now, but Grace had known within thirty seconds of meeting her that Frankie was not her cup of spiked coffee.

"Take a load off," Frankie said, patting the seat beside her. "I wouldn't mind the company, provided you don't launch into a soliloquy about fugly linens."

Against her will and better judgment, Grace laughed. Deciding the company of Sol Bergstein's equally strange spouse was a better alternative to Barb Whitney, she sat down beside the pot-smoking hippie. "I don't suppose someone like you would appreciate the finer points of decorating." 

Grace could feel the sting of her comment as it left her tongue and, to her surprise, it didn't feel as good to cut down the other woman as it usually did. Sure, Frankie was bizarre, but that couldn't outweigh the fact that Sol's wife had always been kind to her. Grace could hardly say the same for herself.

"Someone like me sure as hell wouldn't be taking decorating advice from someone who lives in a house vaguely resembling a dentist's waiting room, that's for damn sure." 

Grace snorted. Frankie was funny, at least.

They were quiet then, the crickets breaking the silence with their own incessant chatter. Frankie took another hit of her joint, the smoke curling in the air around them. She flicked the ashes to the ground, landing between Grace's nude pumps and Frankie's sandals.

Grace took the opportunity to look at her, to see beyond the frizz of curly black hair and tie-dyed clothing. Frankie's hair was starting to gray, moreso than the last time Grace had seen her, sprouting out at the hairline and tangling amongst the rest of that dark mane. Grace had always envied how free and undamaged Frankie's hair was from the lack of hair dye, had always admired the harmonious balance between that wild coif and the softness of her face. At thirty-five, Frankie was beautiful, her features lighting up with every passing pleasure. Where Frankie was soft, Grace was hard. Where Frankie was obvious in her delight, Grace was impenetrable. She wondered what it was like to be Frankie Bergstein. 

Not that she'd ever say this aloud to another living soul -- not to Robert, not to her friends, and certainly not to Frankie. 

"I suppose Sol and Robert are wrapped up talking business," Grace offered, bringing the bitter coffee to her lips for another stinging swallow.

"As per usual. Those two have more fun talking shop than anyone I've ever met -- present company excluded." 

"What's wrong with talking business?" Grace asked defensively. "Say Grace is --" she stopped herself when she realized that Frankie's eyes had immediately glazed over. "Never mind." 

"Hey -- I feel you. Your business is your thing. I could talk about art 'til the cows come home. Sometimes I do. And sometimes the cow gets lost in the pasture." 

"I hadn't noticed." Grace took another sip of her coffee, growing cold now in the coolness of the evening. It had gotten chilly out here, and only then did Grace realize that she left her cardigan in the car. She shivered. 

"Here," Frankie said, and before Grace could protest, Frankie shrugged off her paint-stained olive green utility jacket and slung it over Grace's shoulders. She readjusted the jacket, popping its collar the way Grace wore her blouses, and pulled the button-adorned lapels close together to block out the chill. "Better?"

"You didn't have to do that."

"And have you icier than you already are? No, thank you." Frankie smiled at her and brandished her blunt. "Besides, this bad girl's settling into my bones, and I'm feeling pleasantly warm right now. Hey, Grace, you want a hit?"

Grace imagined herself in another life, one where she said yes and took a defiant drag from the joint and was actually friends with Frankie. She tried to picture what the ride home would be like and snorted. "No thanks. Fun as it would be to elude the torture of this dinner party, I'll pass." 

"Suit yourself. It'd warm you right up."

Grace didn't reply; she took another sip and blinked as the Scotch fully hit her. How much exactly had she poured into her cup? Amused, Grace looked down at the buttons on the jacket, reading what she could make out in the moonlight. There was one that simply read No WAR. Beside that, a smiling cartoon vulva proudly claimed that it was a Vadge of Honor. Below these was a pot leaf in the colors of the Jamaican flag. The last that she could make out read ACT UP FIGHT AIDS in bold, white letters overlaying a red fist. 

The jacket smelled like pot and sandalwood and something distinctly Frankie. She was surprised by how comforting it was, how warm, how inviting. She shifted ever so slightly, snuggling into it. 

"Cozy, huh?"

Grace frowned. For someone higher than her stock price point, Frankie was surprisingly observant. Grace didn't answer; Frankie clearly already knew the answer. "I think I'm getting a contact high."

Frankie laughed, pure and unadulterated. Grace was surprised to acknowledge that she liked the sound of it. "I'm telling you, you should try this. It's supremo ganja -- I rolled this beauty myself."

Grace eyed the joint with interest, wanting nothing more in that moment than to be outside herself for a while, but she shook her head. "Smoking pot really isn't my thing." She motioned toward the cup, as if to say that alcohol was her thing instead.

The moonlight illuminated the mischievous curl of Frankie's lips and a glint in her eye that Grace could only identify as naughty. "Have you ever shot gunned, Grace Hanson?"

"I'm afraid to ask what that even is."

Frankie shimmied excitedly, turning her body on the bench to face her. "You're in a for a treat, my friend. Put your lips together and suck in the smoke when I blow it toward you." Frankie moved her shoulders forward. "We have to get a little closer."

Grace shivered at Frankie's new proximity, front and center in her personal space. "That sounds obscene."

Frankie scoffed and flicked her thumb over the lighter. "Obscene, no. Erotic, maybe." She leaned in closer and whispered, "Come on, baby, and I'll light your fire."

Grace's eyes widened, but Frankie had already pulled in a heavy drag from the joint. She leaned in closer and opened her mouth, though she very nearly gaped when Frankie's puckered lips came inches from her own. 

Frankie blew, and Grace sucked, inhaling the smoke as Frankie exhaled it. Frankie was close enough to kiss and for a moment, Grace wondered if Frankie might actually do it. 

For a moment, Grace actually wanted her to. She couldn't explain it. She didn't know why her heart hammered in anticipation or why her stomach clenched in nervous excitement. There was something about this moment, sitting in the moonlight with a strange, beautiful woman, that made her want to throw convention to the wind and do something dangerous like kiss her husband's partner's wife. 

At this realization, Grace released the smoke from her lungs and coughed. 

Frankie beamed at her. "Atta girl!"

As Grace caught her breath, she heard her name being called, a rope to pull her back to her real life. She stood abruptly, the jacket falling to the bench. She wobbled a little, a combination of pot and Scotch, and issued a terse, "Good night, Frankie," before making a hasty exit toward the house. 

Robert raised an eyebrow at her as she approached "Where have you been? No one has seen you in ages."

"I was keeping Frankie company in the garden."

Robert nodded with a surprised smile, his irritation ebbing. He gestured toward the backyard to Sol with a warm smile, placed his hand on the small of her back, and guided her through the house to the front door. 

When Barb kissed her cheek goodbye, her brown knit together -- she had smelled the pot or Scotch or both -- and Grace suppressed a knowing grin. 

\- 

Grace holds the jacket to her nose and inhales, remembering the sweet smell of the roses and the bite of the Scotch. She smiles at the memory; she had wanted to kiss Frankie Bergstein many times following that evening, but that had been the first. 

They've certainly come a long way. 

As she places the jacket lovingly into the closet, she hears the front door open. Smiling, Grace turns and says, "You know, Frankie? You still light my fire."

Frankie's delight washes over her features. "And a good morning to you, Grace!"

\---


End file.
